BCPS' Dunbar focuses on family, community involvement

Niaka Dunbar, Battle Creek Public Schools' family and community engagement coordinator, talks to students and parents during a literacy fair at Verona Elementary earlier this month.(Photo11: Al Lassen/For the Enquirer)

When Niaka Dunbar was training to become a teacher, she said no one explained to her how she was supposed to work with families.

While she learned about establishing relationships with students, those lessons never really extended to the people that support kids.

"But it was never really a focus on this student comes from a family and a community, and how do you establish relationships with the family and the community that will help this student achieve," Dunbar said.

But now, as Battle Creek Public Schools' family and community engagement coordinator, Dunbar constantly works to bring families, community members and the district together.

"I really work with schools, families and communities to just really help them foster trusting relationships for effective partnerships," she said.

Dunbar is finishing her first year as the district's engagement coordinator, a position funded through a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

A Battle Creek Central High School alumna, Dunbar's first job out of college was at Catholic Family Services, which worked with runaway and homeless young people.

She returned to BCPS, where she taught history for 10 years at the now-closed South Hill Academy alternative school. She then moved to the Michigan Youth Challenge Academy, where she taught social studies, before taking her current position.

"It was never my intention to really leave Battle Creek Public Schools, and so I'd always been working, I told them, I've always been working to get back home," Dunbar said.

In her first year on the job, Dunbar has been a jack of all trades, working on everything from developing relationships with community partners to organizing events to helping with truancy issues.

"(Her work) has benefited the district immensely," Superintendent Kim Parker-DeVauld said. "We have a much stronger focus on both parent and community engagement. We have someone that can organize those opportunities in a way that benefits both the students and the staff in Battle Creek Public Schools and so as a result of having her in that position, we have a lot more opportunities for students to be engaged in the community and for our community to be engaged in our schools."

Dunbar said this year, a lot of her efforts have centered on working to establish relationships between the district and other organizations.

The district has partnered with Calhoun Great Start Collaborative and BC Pulse for the collaborative's parent empowerment sessions. Recent sessions covered topics such as trauma, health, safety and coaching.

Dunbar said the district also is working with New Level Sports to provide options for kids having trouble at school, such as mentors taking students who are having rough days to the New Level facility. She said the district already has piloted this initiative and is planning to continue next year.

Earlier this month, she said she's been working on creating position descriptions and streamlining the parent facilitator positions, soon to be known as family advocates, across the district. Previously, principals have written job descriptions specific to their buildings, but Dunbar wants to establish job consistency across throughout the district.

Parker-DeVauld said Dunbar's organization of the facilitators has created more building-based opportunities such as family reading events.

Dunbar also works with the district's truancy and interventionist officer to conduct home visits and find resources to connect to students who might have attendance issues.

The coordinator also has brought in a musician from the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation to play for kids, spearheaded a literacy through diversity event at the high school and is planning end-of-year events and open houses at district schools.

"She doesn't come in and say, 'Okay this is what's happening,'" Director of Secondary Education Deborah Nuzzi said. "She comes in and she says, 'This is the outcome that we would like, how can we tailor this to fit best for Verona?' ... So she works with schools, you know, with what makes sense for them and their students."

Niaka Dunbar, Battle Creek Public Schools' family and community engagement coordinator, talks to students and parents during a Verona Elementary School literacy fair.(Photo11: Al Lassen/For the Enquirer)

Dunbar said the district wants to establish a parent advisory council, a youth advisory council and a parent university that provides professional development.

"We want parents to engage in school and what's happening in the district, but I also want parents to feel empowered enough that wherever they are, they feel like they have something to offer and that they understand that their voice should be heard," Dunbar said. "So yes, we want the parent university to inform, empower, engage them with regards to what we're doing, but my hope is that whatever the skills and things that we learn about spills over into other areas of life in the community."

Dunbar said she also wants to increase professional development opportunities for staff and faculty to learn about engagement.

"Family and community engagement isn't a person or a couple of people, it's something that we all within the district have to work on," she said.

Dunbar said you want families to have good experiences with the schools.

"It's not that they've dropped them off to us and from eight to three it's hands off," she said. "No, you're a part of this. We need — we all need — to work together. It might sound cliche, but it truly does take a village, and I think that's what family and community engagement does.

"It really just reinforces that it takes a village to raise a child, to educate a child and that we have to work together."

Contact Safiya Merchant at 269-966-0684 or smerchant@battlecreekenquirer.com. Follow her on Twitter: @SafiyaMerchant